By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent
Local artist Linda Bethke shared her tips and tricks with members of the Fluvanna Art Association’s monthly meeting on Saturday (May 3). Bethke opened her three-hour workshop by discussing traditional watercolor, which relies on water control, building color, masking or leaving white space, and using various watercolor brushes. She talked about her contemporary methods of flicking or spritzing water, using salt, alcohol, saran wrap, and wooden skewers to create effects.
Traditional watercolor has always been a fast-moving yet meticulous medium to master, frustrating many artists who try it and admit it is one of the most difficult mediums to control. Bethke’s favorite comment and one that is key to watercolor is to get the paint “juicy.”
“There are so many ways to control it, loose, pale, washy, or wet on wet, and let the paint do some the work,” she said. “Avoid mud, let pure colors mix on the paper, and swoop the brush through the paint instead of mixing it on a palette. Tilt your paper to mix and blend colors, it’s much prettier, cleaner, and less mud.” She adds that more water creates lighter pigment and more paint creates darker pigment.
Glazing is often used to help deepen color by using a weak mixture of transparent pigment applied to a dry area.
“My first application of paint is rarely my last. Glazing helps to enrich and beautify an area.”
Most watercolorists manipulate the puddles of paint with a brush to achieve a certain effect. Bethke applies paint with her brush and then uses the blunt end of a wooden skewer, whisking it upwards at lightning-fast speed to create grass.
She uses this and other simple tools, including a wad of paper towel to blot an area or a Scrub Daddy to pull out color and create white spaces, flicking water on an area with her fingers, Alcohol can have the same effect. A solution of fifty percent alcohol will disburse paint and create unique patterns. A higher alcohol content of 80 or 90 percent will remove it and leave white areas with soft edges. A frisket or a watercolor mask is painted on to preserve white areas and removed later to leave perfect hard edges. It all depends on the look the artist desires.
“This leads to a variety of hard and soft edges,” she said as she used a small spray bottle to spritz water on her paper to dampen it.
She uses these various household tools to create grass, snow-capped mountains, thistles, rocks, twigs, trees, and weeds.
“The foreground is a safe place in a landscape to experiment with these techniques.”
As she demonstrates, she discussed things for artists to consider. Members delved into their experimentation with the techniques as Bethke reminded them that nothing is perfect and it’s not the goal when creating.
“Special one-of-a-kind happy accidents are diamonds in painting. Artists can’t even recreate these again.”
